Circuit boards are widely used in the Electrical and Electronics Industry in the manufacture of electrical and electronic equipment. Such circuit boards are prepared with printed wiring used to interconnect electrical components that are mounted on the circuit board and which form the elements of the electrical and electronic equipment. Typically, such boards are installed in mounting apparatus and coupled together to form the large complex circuitry of the electrical and electronic equipment, such as computer electronic switching systems, used in communication networks.
Electrical and electronic equipment is increasingly using optical devices to improve both the capacity and speed of the equipment, oftentimes called optoelectronic equipment, in handling information. Such optical devices are interconnected by optical fiber conductors so that a beam of light emitted by a transmitting optical device is transmitted by an optical fiber conductor to a receiving optical device. The optical fiber conductors require elaborate and unwieldy connections, connector and optical fiber apparatus to aline and connect each optical fiber conductor with both transmitting and receiving optical devices. As the technology of optical devices continues to improve, optical devices decrease in size such that several optical devices could be mounted on a circuit board for installation into circuit board mounting apparatus of optoelectronic equipment. A problem arises in attempting to mount optical devices on a circuit board in that the elaborate and unwiedly connections, connector and optical fiber apparatus necessary for the interconnection of the optical devices requires space that is not available on present types of circuit boards.